Derivatives

fossilization

That has led many to posit that the ‘cambrian explosion’ is more likely an artifact of the differential fossilization of animals with hard parts, particularly exo-skeletons, than of a real explosion.

So it is simply false, given what we know about the process of fossilization, to declare that we should have a perfect record of every species and therefore should have a perfect sequence of fossils documenting every transition.

It was not developed to ‘get around the data’, it was developed to apply what we knew about genetics to what we should then expect in terms of fossilization.